


The Fairest of the seasons

by vermicious_knid



Category: Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 09:01:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2382614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vermicious_knid/pseuds/vermicious_knid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if the only wish Mr. Dark could not fulfill was his own? And just maybe, if one looked hard enough behind the bloom of the black thorns in his mind, he kept a secret shut tight and locked away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fairest of the seasons

_...finally you wind up owner of the carousel, keeper of the freaks... proprietor for some small part of eternity of the traveling dark carnival shows...._

\- Ray Bradbury

* * *

 

The illustrated man was watching a tree’s shadow on main street, watching it grow. He was watching the shadow so intently, and not the boy polishing his shoes.

_Edwin, age 12 and 6 months old who wished he was taller._ When the boy was done, he reached out his hand for payment. A pink carnival ticket was gently put into his hand. No hesitation in Mr. Darks pleasant smile.

“Free rides tonight, but quick – tomorrow the price must be paid in full.”

“Thank you.” The boy said. Thank you. Mr. Darks smile didn’t falter. The shadows turned over belly up and laughed at the sunlight.

“No trouble my boy, no trouble at all.” As he walked away, Mr. Dark felt a trickle of strange nostalgia.

He never remembered much of his old life, these days. He used parts of it as a joke, occasionally. _I remember a man in Wisconsin, back where I grew up…_ His memories was like a small box he rarely opened filled with muddy photographic stills all taken with the angle wrong, the light off and the figures in the images bleak and faded. He would look at them and laugh. But there was one photograph he would never look at. _But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee. And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed._

But the past has that nagging habit of appearing when you think it won't. A chill at the back of his neck was the only announcement it gave before it came for him. He stopped in the street and stared.

He saw her across the street, in the town he had forgotten the name of. He had not imagined her for more than 20 years. He didn’t remember when he had stopped. Those emotions had bled out of him, bitter and metallic he thought they tasted now. Useless and exhausting. The maple leafs from that season had fallen away, and the tree it had fallen from was dead and gone. How could he be capable of such thoughts, when all he had done was breathe in the distant cries of people who wanted things for themselves? The hopeless agony of strangers and the greed of man that flowed through his glass like a good sip of wine on a balmy summer night. For years now of his life, there had been nothing but the chase of other peoples bad days, their broken bones and their terminal illnesses, bruised hearts and their bitter, soft tears. The sweet mouthful of a lovers bloody quarrel at dusk. The wrinkled lines in a desperate hand on his arm, begging him to make it stop. He tended to the moths in Hades garden, and fed his dogs with the scraps of peoples frayed wishes. _Being your slave, what should we do but tend upon the hours and times of your desire?_ Yes, a beast among beasts that never bled despite man’s trials.

She was carrying a grocery bag and she was smiling. She had stopped to pick up a pear that had fallen out and he watched her catch it. Replayed it in his mind again, again. And then seemingly without his permission, a slip of her old voice filtered through his head. Nothing but a short comment, something that anyone could have said. "I heard the weather is getting cold, I can feel it". She had gotten older. There were wisps of silver in her blonde hair. More freckles on her hands, a few wrinkles on her forehead. But her walk was the way it had always been, a bounce on her heels that he recognized from long ago. When they both had been nine and he had seen her from his bike, her sneakers making a gentle scrap-scrap against the pavement. _Mary, Mary quite contrary_. How he had followed her home and asked her question after question about her mother’s garden, and the flowers she didn’t know the names of yet just so he could hear her speak. Watch her hair tumble around her face and the careful hands tucking it back. He dipped the ends of her fresh wheat hair in ink, apologized to her behind closed doors and between beatings from his father. She drew stars into his bruises. _None of this agony should ever have been mine._

_And it never shall be._

Flowers wilt, but in the shroud of night some will still bloom. And you cannot stop a frozen lake from thawing in spring. Time will still move, and how it moves is always beautiful. And there is nothing you can do about it. He saw her walk away down the street, and did not stop her. He did not shout her name, didn’t tease, didn’t ask her about the apples from her tree or if he could help her with the roses. He did not make a single sound. The only needle of pain from her soul was a distant, dying question of a tired child before bedtime. _Why did my cat run away?_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Any quotes you may recognize is all Shakespeare.


End file.
